Your Blogging Staff

Contributing to this blog:
- "Dave" is Dave Barry, who is a humor columnist and presidential contender.
- "judi" is Judi Smith, who is Dave's Research Department, as well as being interested in men.
- "Walter" is Walter, a bone from the penis of a walrus.

PLEA FROM A DAD

Dear Dave Barry;

I need your help. I am quite sure that only you will know how to save me from my domestic problem.

The problem that I have stem from an event that occurred a couple of years ago, when I allowed my wife and children to bring two small long-eared RODENTS into the house (for the purposes of this discussion, we can refer to these rodents as "bunnies"). Yes, these are close relatives to the rabbits that infest our neighborhood, eat our vegetable garden and flowers, and generally make a pest of themselves..As rodents, these are also of course close relatives to the mice that we trap in the basement and discard, or the rats that recently caused a New York restaurant to be condemned and closed down, and whose droppings can carry several deadly diseases including Bubonic Plague. I was assured that bunnies are inexpensive, easy to maintain, and not much trouble (which up to now has been true).

However, I have just been told that in order to maximize their long term health, they need surgery. But while regular surgery would be okay, they would be more comfortable with laser surgery. Of course, we don't want just any laser surgery for our RODENTS (oops, I mean bunnies), but we need the very finest laser surgeon (who I believe is to be flown in from Zurich in his private jet for the operation).

I have suggested that rather than pay $400 per bunny for surgery, if they die we can just buy another one for $25 at next year's local fair. My wife was of course horrified, and suggested that if I didn't want to pay for the best, then perhaps I should discuss this with my two young daughters and see what they think. In considering this, I can imagine years from now my daughter, talking to the prison psychologist, saying "well, all was well until I discovered that my dad was too cheap to pay for the best surgery for my dearest (bunny name deleted to protect the innocent), then I had to turn to a life of crime and depravity".

So, what am I to do? Should I pay for the surgery?

Thanks, Dad

(please withhold my name if you print this, since I don't like sleeping on the sofa).

I have no answer for this. But I do remember years ago when my son had gerbils, which were always escaping from the cage, and we'd frantically try to find them before God forbid they got caught in the traps that we set in the kitchen to kill the mice THAT LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE THE GERBILS.

February 26, 2007

24

Here are the schematics of the plot perimeter:

The highlight of last week's episode was the heartwarming moment between Jack and his dad, Farmer Hoggett, when FH made Jack kneel down at gunpoint, but decided -- The old softy! --not to shoot Jack in the back of his head. That's how you show true affection Bauer-family style: by not killing a fellow Bauer. I'm assuming Jack and his dad will meet again before this season is up, and that their father-son reunion will make The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like Teletubbies.

Anyway, at the very end of last week, Farmer Hoggett left a phone for Jack, with instructions to call a certain number, and when Jack did, the person at the other end, in a totally unexpected plot twisteroo, was...

In subplot action, the Ally McBeal Weenie, who looked like he was going to join the plot -- which this blog wholeheartedly supports -- to whack President Payton and replace him with Vice President Powers Boothe, decided instead to rat out the plotters, so he was clubbed with a flashlight in the bunker by Colonel Mustard, who... no, wait, sorry, he was clubbed by his treacherous aide Reed, but, tragically, does not appear to have been killed.

In the Morris-and-Chloe subplot, Morris is still down on himself for programming the suitnukes after being used as a human do-it-yourself project by the evil terrorist submastermind Fayed. Chloe still loves Morris because he did not metabolize his alcohol. (Chloe can tell, just by looking at you, what you have metabolized.)

The Walid-and-Sandra subplot has completely disappeared, which is fine with me. If the writers try to bring it back, I think the other characters should say to them, "Get out of here! You never had anything to do with the plot anyway!"

Anyway, the big question tonight is: What will ex-president Handbag tell Jack about Gredenko, the evil terrorist mastermind for now? Can Jack find the remaining bombs before they go off? Most important of all, will there be any sightings of ex-president Handbag's First Lady?

We will just have to wait and see. And while we are waiting, let us not forget to metabolize.

UPDATE: It is SO hard to get good terrorist submastermind help these days.

UPDATE: The bunker has Ominous Muzak.

UPDATE: PERIMETER!

UPDATE: "He reminds me of you... neither one of you can act."

UPDATE: "Hi! We're here to kill the president!" "OK, then!"

UPDATE: Duct tape!

UPDATE: "We're not cold-blooded murderers." Who WRITES this stuff?

UPDATE: Victoria's Secret has reinvented the bra... again.

UPDATE: Morris specificed the wrong slot assignment for the SIP adapter! If I had a nickel for every time I did that...

UPDATE: If somebody had drilled two inches into my shoulder with a 3/8" bit, I would not swing my arms the way Morris does when he walks.

UPDATE: Too much talking.

UPDATE: Snore.

UPDATE: A drone!

UPDATE: So, do we think the terrorists will put a suitnuke on the drone, and it will drone away for several tense episodes? Or what?

UPDATE: It takes THIRTY MINUTES to get a bomb ready?

UPDATE: There can be no question that the highlights of tonight's episode are being provided by Victoria's Secret.

UPDATE: "Don't be sarcastic! Your data merge is incomplete!"

UPDATE: The Morris subplot is getting so repetitive that they have to be setting us up for a shockeroo, right? Like he's a mole? Or he's the one who reinvented the bra?

UPDATE: Seriously, you put a three-inch piece of duct tape on my mouth, and I will have it off in seconds without using my hands.

UPDATE: OK, it just now occurred to the weenie to do that?

UPDATE: Summary: Not enough Jack. Way too much talking. One boom -- one lousy boom -- at the end. The clear action highlight was Chloe yanking Morris out of the toilet. And of course the reinvented bra, which seems to work well. We now await the amazing Steve, who should be writing the show, if you want this blog's opinion.

OSCARS UPDATE

February 25, 2007

THE OSCARS

I'll be on the road tonight, so I'll miss some, if not all, of the show. I'm posting this here in case you commenters wish to comment. I'll join in if I get where I'm going in time, but I don't know much about this year's nominees, because as in past years, I generally see movies with my daughter, and thus am pretty much limited to the genre known technically as "Movies Featuring Talking Raccoons."

FLORIDA WEIRDNESS MAGNET UPDATE

"Out of Africa:" This fundraiser by the Young Adventurers will
feature celebrities David Carradine, Shelley Long, Kato Kaelin, Dan
Haggerty and more at Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, from 6 to 11 p.m., Friday,
Feb. 23. Call Terry Bomar at (561) 317-kids or visit http:/www.youngadventurers.org.

(Thanks to this blog's old friend and ex-neighbor Mr. Paul Levine, who informs this blog that when his wife got married to the man she was married to before Paul, the ceremony was performed by... Judge Larry Seidlin.)